This paper questions current empirical practice in the study of growth. We argue that much of the modern empirical growth literature is based on assumptions concerning regressors, residuals, and parameters which are implausible both from the perspective of economic theory as well as from the...

This paper has two purposes. One is to assess different models of inventory behavior in terms of their ability to well approximate the realized data on inventories. We do this initially for the pure production smoothing model and then for a sequence of generalizations of the model. Our analysis...

This paper characterizes the frequency domain properties of feedback control rules in linear systems in order to better understand how different policies affect outcomes frequency by frequency. We are especially concerned in understanding how reductions of variance at some frequencies induce...

This paper provides a unified framework for interpreting a wide range of interactions models which have appeared in the economics literature. A formalization taken from the statistical mechanics literature is shown to encompass a number of socioeconomic phenomena ranging from out of wedlock...

Since the classic work of Feyerabend and Kuhn, the role of social factors in the scientific enterprise has been a major concern in the philosophy and history of science. In particular, the presence of social factors such as the desire for prestige or pressures to conform to accepted ideas, have...

This paper describes a range of methods which have been proposed to study interactions in economic and social contexts. By interactionsk, we refer to interdependences between individual decisions which are not mediated by markets. These types of models have been employed to understand phenonmena...

This paper provides an analysis of aggregate behavioral outcomes when individual utility exhibits social interaction effects. We study generalized logistic models of individual choice which incorporate terms reflecting the desire of individuals to conform to the behavior of others in an...

It is increasingly recognized that the structure of financial risks interacts with economic or fundamental risks in a way that influence real economic outcomes. Recent work documents, on the one hand, the apparent excessive sensitivity of financial markets to economic shocks (see especially...

This paper explores the dynamics of income inequality by studying the evolution of human capital investment and neighborhood choice for a population of families. Parents affect the conditional probability distribution of their children's income through the choice of a neighborhood in which to...

This paper develops a decision-theoretic approach to policy analysis. We argue that policy evaluation should be conducted on the basis of two factors: the policymaker's preferences, and the conditional distribution of the outcomes of interest given a policy and available information. From this...